Summary

Climate has been relatively stable at high latitudes during the past 10,000 years, but as
Gasse
explains in her Perspective, the tropics have seen large hydrological shifts during this time. She highlights the report by
Barker
et al., who use an isotopic tracer to deduce changes in moisture transport patterns in tropical Africa over the past 14,000 years. In contrast with high-latitude and temperate regions, isotopic rainfall compositions in the tropics correlate primarily with precipitation, and cannot be interpreted in terms of temperature only.